


Heard The Grapevine Got Twisted

by thegoodthebadandthenerdy



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Established Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Humor, M/M, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 04, Time Skips, and other general tomfoolery on my part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-22
Updated: 2021-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-27 21:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30129102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoodthebadandthenerdy/pseuds/thegoodthebadandthenerdy
Summary: It was practically fable around the office after that: Sam Seaborn, his old friend, and the state of New Hampshire.-Or: A story told in six parts by three people who remember the guy that walked out on his future in the middle of a rainstorm.
Relationships: Josh Lyman/Sam Seaborn
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Heard The Grapevine Got Twisted

**Author's Note:**

> if you follow me on tumblr youve probably heard me talk abt this one as a project called rumor mill!! i've been working on it since november so while i'm grateful for its help in beating back my writer's block, i'm equally as grateful to get it out of my drafts lmao

**i. the first day**

Carter Waite had worked at Gage, Whitney, Pace for three very long, very productive years. So long were the years, in fact, that he’d been permitted a sense of seniority it could hardly be said he put the effort into earning. But no one questioned him at the water cooler, nor did they try to stop him when he elbowed his way into meetings he surely wasn’t on the guest list for, and for that it was a matter of means and ends.

See, he was polite— _enough_ —and confident— _overly so_ —and even if he somehow lacked either of those things— _not a chance_ —Carter Waite was also the guy one would call in the event they needed _a guy_ , but couldn’t call one of their friends for fear of what may be legally compelled out of them at a later date. Enforcer was too harsh a word, and weasel just wasn’t slick enough. ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. And if they won’t let poor Rudolph join in on their reindeer games, then become the guy that knows all their dirty laundry,’ that was what he always said. It wasn’t pithy, but it was credibly lucrative.

And it was why, on that fine afternoon, he was feet up on his desk, shoulders so lax they could very well be in another hemisphere. When everyone else was working through another day of mind-numbing minutiae, _he_ was free as a bird clad in designer Italian suits to do as he damn well pleased.

He ruffled his paper slight enough that it made a sound, but not so much to call attention to the fact that it had been opened to a respectable halfway point for the better part of an hour and he hadn’t ingested a word of it. The trick, he’d found, wasn’t to look like he was in the throes of rigid concentration, but instead to look so utterly above it all he could barely sit still. Notching his ankles one over the other, lifting his chin, he positioned his eyes just high enough to see overtop the wilting pages.

The glass front of his office gave way to an unimpressed-in-beige hallway scene. One whose inhabitants, however fleeting, were always leisurely, because any and every face worth impressing was two floors up. Sometimes they peeped in on him, a smile in the hopes it would pacify him for the day, and he’d shark one back while reminding them about the dinner party they were hosting he hadn’t been invited to. Oh, they’d sigh, but they’d nod and all would be right. Carter didn’t need respectability, he was fine with a more casual relationship to any breed of it as long as he’d romanced a certain amount of rapt attention.

But still, time and place for everything. A clutch of laughter slipped between the crack in the door from the frame, and he was on the scent of joviality like a cadaver dog. 

The offenders appeared in a blur, suited and too euphoric for a weekday afternoon. Hair so dark it was almost black, slicked down into something complacent, and a suit that cut like a paper snowflake. A shot of auburn and a sort of slouch, carrying sleeves a hair’s breadth too long to be fashionable, even for current trends. Another bark of laughter, and that was game on. He knew that voice, that rigid spine. _Wunderkind,_ he thought with as close to real glee as he was capable of.

Carter’s shoes smacked the—tasteful, well-maintained—carpet underfoot when he shoved back from his desk. In the time it took for him to cross his office, the two on the other side of the door had lurched ahead in _Frogger_ step, hardly looking where they were going. Yanking on the handle, the door jerked open before they could disappear fully out of sight.

“Seaborn?” he asked, affecting full prim-and-proper. Samuel Seaborn was as sharp as they came and it never did well to start off the underdog with him; the kid was a _shark_ , and he was on the fast track for partner. He was not, Carter believed all in all, the worst sort of person to have in one’s back pocket.

They hadn’t made it quite to that yet. Truthfully, he could barely score a conversation with the guy while they were on the clock, and he had even less of a chance at the corporate gatherings when Seaborn’s tiger of a fiancée was clamped to his arm. But they were friendly. (He suspected Seaborn was friendly with everyone, but hey, it was a start.)

Seaborn surfaced, dazed, from his conversation, like a kid lifting their head from the baseball bat before they started swinging for the piñata. His eyes refocused when they alighted on Carter, but only just so. There was a looseness abound in them previously undiscovered. There was something awfully disconcerting about breaking new ground where Seaborn was concerned.

They all called him kid, sport, slugger—and, on one notable occasion, bingo—but he was almost _overly_ on guard, which was a stark diagnosis from Carter, Man With Ulterior Motives. He was professional, with a taste for precision that could be downright scary, and more importantly—most importantly, rather—he was damn good at what he did. Carter had slinked into his fair share of meetings in which Seaborn had routinely decimated one rag doll spokesperson or another, thoroughly tore through opposing counsel without a single wayward word, or flat out shredded through a carefully crafted argument, colleague or not.

Needless to say, but well to be noted, seeing Seaborn look his age, or interact with someone in that same bracket outside of work…hell, it was the holy miracle.

“Carter,” Seaborn greeted, mouth stuck broad. He had a hand on his buddy’s shoulder, which he used to sort of push him forward, making him stumble a bit. “Hey, this is Josh Lyman. He’s an old friend.”

“Oh, yeah? Hell, Seaborn, we all figured you sprang fully-formed from Duke one day,” Carter replied with a responding good-natured grin. He stuck his hand out to Lyman, making him reach forward for the shake. “Carter Waite,” he added.

“Good to meet you,” Lyman said, and his voice was reedier than expected. Clammier hand, too. Carter gave him the old _pleasure to meet you_ nod that one had to perfect before they were allowed to graduate law school, and subtly swiped his hand against the bottom corner of his suit jacket.

“Where you coming from?” he asked, doing a covert sweep over him. First inspection hadn’t yielded full truth. Oh sure, his suit was still shit, probably scratchy beyond belief, but his slouch wasn’t accommodation, it was practiced swagger. The sort of unaffectedness that could unnerve the coolest of the bunch. He had sunglasses poking out of the front pocket of his shirt and his tie sat crooked on his chest, but there wasn’t a blemish on his shoes, and he’d managed to keep a steady, dimpled grin along with eye contact all the while. He wasn’t a corporate guy, Carter didn’t think, but he knew what he was doing, too. Probably just as good at it as Seaborn.

He looked between the two of them for the sign. The click. Old college hounds, back together again. It meant something, and he’d been waiting on it to _mean_ something with Seaborn his fair share of the calendar year. Office climbing was a full contact sport.

“Josh is up from D.C.,” Sam said finally, the slightest of squints to his left eye. The corner of his mouth was starting to bunch, more incredulous than surprised. The kid, he caught on quick. “He’s in Senator Hoynes’s office.”

“Hey, sure, imagine that. You got friends in high places, Seaborn.”

So maybe Seaborn had come up with the sharks, too. Hadn’t been all on his own in the big blue ocean. It was more of a shock than it should have been. Another interesting piece for the board.

“Nah,” said Lyman with an impatient flick of his chin, but the grin never wavered. “Always been the other way around. You kidding?” He motioned around the hall, which had light fixtures from the current decade, at least. A self-deprecating laugh, well-placed, gave way to, “This place is…yeah, we’re lucky if the coffee machine works in the morning.”

“Ah, well. I’ve never been one for grunt work.”

“Hey, sure, imagine that,” Lyman parroted back, eyebrows bounding up his forehead just once. The syllables hadn’t even finished twisting in the wind before he winced, imperceptibly, and Carter would’ve sworn to Father Kline come Sunday that Seaborn had just pinched his elbow, _hard_ , and that in return, Lyman had shoved that same elbow toward Seaborn’s ribs.

God, it was like looking at two spinning cogs, one working the other in an endless loop. But it was fun to know Seaborn was more than an anal-retentive stickler with a glare a mile wide, or the good puppy posing for company photos as if his coupling wasn’t as stiff as the canned laughter of a sitcom track.

“Well,” Carter started, already mourning the loss of this porthole look into the life of Seaborn he’d yet to chip his way into. “Let me get out of your hair, got a right good bit coming across the desk today. Good meeting you, Lyman. Seaborn, I’ll be seeing you.”

Seaborn nodded, uttering a subdued, “Carter,” through his teeth. The stood for a bloated moment in a stalemate, the hand of Seaborn’s not orbiting around Lyman clenching impatiently. He was practically buzzing. Admittedly, Seaborn’s inability to fully tuck the fact he moved at a mile-a-minute pace back into his carefully curated visage was about the only common denominator between him and youthfulness.

Carter lingered over his threshold as they departed back down the hall, squabbling under their breaths. _He seemed like a real peach. / Waite? Oh, sure. A sterling sampler of what we’ve got to offer. / Hey, just so you know, I mean, it’s not all grunt work. It’s mostly grunt work, and the coffee sucks, but there’s, uh, there’s real merit._

Sometime later in the afternoon, Seaborn trudged back by Carter’s office, alone. He had a smudge of mustard on his sleeve and a look on his face that blurred the line between stricken and determination. Distracted enough that he nearly tripped over his own two feet, too. Carter thought it was good to see Wunderkind performing at a rate closer to that of his mere mortal colleagues.

**ii. the second day**

Another day’s paper, soggy now, was tucked under Carter’s arm when he stepped into the lobby. Remnants of his lunchbreak coffee were still in hand, though mostly gone to dregs now, because he knew better than to return empty-handed. No sense in looking like he’d been dicking around for an hour. He _had_ been dicking around for an hour—lying in wait of the ever rare meeting placed on his schedule—but the less proof of that, the better.

Outside, the heavens had opened, or the floodgates were off-duty, or there was a crack in the clouds and they were leaking at an alarming rate. A substantial, alarming rate. In layman’s terms, it was fucking pouring _._

From head to foot, Carter was soaked; so soaked, in fact, he was going to have to ask someone to find him a new pair of socks before his meeting. Otherwise, he might scandalize someone with a flash of ankle. And at any rate, scut work was character building, so he didn’t feel too bad about it.

“Sure has let loose out there, huh?” the woman at the front desk commented. She was the short brunette one with the unfortunately anachronistic name. Darlene or Marlene or Maybelline or something, he couldn’t remember.

“No kidding,” he said, flinging water off his hands onto the floor. He had only just enough self-preservation to keep himself from saying _No shit, Sherlock_ , because incurring the wrath of the ladies at the front desk was just asking for your desk to get clogged up with superfluous deliveries and having your doorway darkened by chatty tourists. 

“You happen to know when it’s meant to let up?”

And he wanted to say _no, I don’t, because if I could predict the_ damn _weather, I’d be on the_ damn _news, wouldn’t I?_ Instead, he said, “Not the foggiest,” with a close-lipped smile.

She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could get a word out, the front door slammed open on its pressurized hinges in time with a crack of thunder. Carter contained his yelp to that of the mental nature, but it was on the back of his tongue before he had the good sense to clamp down on it.

Standing sopping to the bone was Lyman. Not just Lyman, but enough lightning-sharp dynamism to set a corn field in Iowa on fire from where he stood. His hair was plastered to his head and his coat was an entirely different color from that which it was supposed to be, but the smile on his face was blinding. Carter felt, oddly, at a loss for words.

“Can I help you, sir?” Marlene—which seemed as good a bet on her name as any—asked, using her best ‘conversing with the public when the public is guys in ragged business attire that stumble in off the streets of New York’ voice. It was a cross between the bartender asking the alcoholic if he needed a cab and the nurse promising _this won’t hurt a bit._

“I gotta,” he said—panted, rather, and Carter hadn’t known that was a think humans did after childhood—and motioned forward. That sure explained it all, good to know this was what their elected officials had to work with when it came to staffers. Not that Carter didn’t think Hoynes was something of a baboon’s ass, but still, you could only wish so much ill will on one person before it became a bit unfair.

“Sir? Do you have an appointment?”

When he took off without a word, Carter didn’t even flinch. Seaborn sure knew how to pick ‘em.

“Sir. _Sir!”_

“I’ll be in and out, like I wasn’t even here!”

Maybe-Marlene was already dialing security when Lyman took the turnstile and crashed through the throng of people milling around the departing elevator. His apology was cut off halfway when the doors clamped shut over his bouncing frame.

Marlene looked to Carter to see if _he_ knew what the hell all that was about, and all he could manage was the thought that though he didn’t, he surely would like to. He waved her off the phone, taking three quick steps out of the puddle he’d made on the linoleum to grab the receiver from her hand and cradle it. She pursed her lips muttering—something unsavory, no doubt—under her breath as she reached for the notebook discarded at her elbow and the pen thrown down on top of it.

Lyman, for his part, kept his word. He wasn’t that long at all, only a couple minutes if it was a blink, and he wasn’t alone, which had to do some kind of cancellation mathematics on the whole equation. He was whooping, actually whooping, barely able to stay on his feet for the fact that he was nearly airborne with every step. Seaborn, hardly a step behind him, was laughing like it was battle-won glory. They attracted peripheral attention easily, burning through the lobby and busting out onto the sidewalk. Carter could see them standing, just standing there, incredulous, for as long as he had the attention span to watch.

“Someone’s got the weekend buzz early,” Mabel—that was her name, _Mabel—_ commented, only marginally bitter. “They one of yours?”

“I’m not sure.”

When he reached the first level of Gage, Whitney’s offices, the current was humming with ducked looks and whispered commentary. No one had a damn clue, not where Seaborn had gone or who he’d gone with. Just that it sounded a whole hell of a lot like he wasn’t coming back. And wasn’t that something, Carter thought. Wunderkind had gone AWOL in broad daylight.

It took the rest of the afternoon to track down anyone with real firsthand knowledge and the propensity for squealing, but when Carter finally did get the story as it was, it made about as much sense as his rain-soaked paper, and was just as befuddling.

In the middle of the final meeting for the talks that, if secured, surely would have landed Seaborn that coveted position he’d been trailing like a dog after a steak for a while now, Lyman appeared at the conference room’s window. ‘Drenched to the bone, babbling out of his mind.’ Seaborn, upon seeing him, or somehow a second before even that, stood up and hardly bothered to excuse himself before he followed Lyman into the rain, seemingly understanding whatever the hell it was he was talking about. And if he hadn’t, he trusted him enough to figure it out eventually.

Must have been one hell of a good deal. He sure never came back.

**iii. the first election day**

Angie Lancing was usually in bed, asleep, by ten p.m. on account of the fact that no matter what day it happened to be, where she needed to be, or what she had previously done, she would awake at five thirty-five on the dot. She had once run a 10k and woke up even more refreshed the next morning than usual.

She could trace it back to high school. Stocking shelves and running inventory at her family’s corner grocer before pedaling as fast as her bike would take her so as to be in her seat in homeroom before the second bell. In college, she’d filled the beginning hours of her class schedule so tightly that the office clerk, an ancient woman with coral lipstick, had asked if she was _absolutely sure._ She had been. With the same intensity as her morning routine, she always lost her steam after dinner, but by then, all her work would be done anyway.

When she took her first position at Gage, Whitney—glorified coffee-fetching though it was, despite that pesky little magna cum laude law degree—she felt it best to be punctual, so she continued on bustling around before the sun rose, taking the fifteen minute train ride, arriving before just about anyone else. Being now of senior authority, unless she had a Date Line defying meeting, they didn’t _expect_ to see her face until seven thirty, eight o’clock. That didn’t stop her from catching the elevator up at six thirty to take her second cup of coffee in front of the morning skyline, but it was as nice a thought as any.

Checking her watch, still buckled around her wrist even now, Angie confirmed only what she already knew. Eleven oh eight. The last time she’d seen this far a side of ten thirty, her appendix felt like it was trying to make a break for it via her bellybutton. And _that_ was from a time when she’d thought putting enough hairspray in her hair to choke an elephant was cute.

But it was November 3rd, 1998, and the votes were still rolling in. The tickers on the news crawled on with each wave from the now shuttered east coast polls, lurching ahead when a particularly plump county called it quits. She couldn’t seem to pry her eyes away from the TV, had hardly been able to since she cast her vote at the opening of the New York polls. She’d tried cutting it off a few hours ago, but halfway through brushing her teeth she returned to the living room, toothbrush stuck out of the side of her mouth, toothpaste on her chin, to flick it back on.

She’d finished her nightly routine to the droning sound of a motley crew of anchors, emerging from her bedroom in fresh sweats, a claw clip holding up her curls, and glasses parked firmly on her pinky-white face. They weren’t going to call this one early, no chance in hell, so she might as well get comfortable.

When the stage first opened up for the ’98 election, everyone figured it’d be Hoynes. You didn’t have to be ensconced in the ins and outs of the Democratic Party’s candidate shortlist to gather that. Upon Bartlet’s first emergence, she figured he’d be another one of those guys that came out and said his piece and, eventually, found himself at curtain call as head of some department under a Hoynes administration. A cabinet position, if he played his cards right.

And then Bartlet decided to blow that all to hell by coming out swinging. And he wasn’t just good, he was really good. She ended up calling her cousin in New Hampshire to rally up whatever information she could find, and after that, she cut a check to the Bartlet for President campaign. When he got the nomination—Hoynes on the ticket, but she knew enough about neutralizing threats—she felt it personally. In a way, actually, it was personal.

A couple weeks before the DNC, she got an e-mail from her cousin. Subject line: isn’t this the guy?? Body: a link to an article published by a tiny New Hampshirite paper.

The article was meant to pull the curtain back an inch on Bartlet’s campaign headquarters. Not so much a meet-and-greet as a tag line on each of his heavy hitters and a group shot above the fold. Despite the black and white print, the air of the photo was one of hardly contained motion. Among a sea of smiles from people that looked like they hadn’t sat still in two years and weren’t entirely sure how to anymore, Angie caught sight of the one she’d know best.

His hair was longer than she remembered and he was wearing a fraying Duke sweatshirt instead of the suits she’d become accustomed to seeing him in every day, but he was very much still the same guy. The description beneath only confirmed that. _(Bottom row, L—R) Claudia Jean Cregg, Samuel Seaborn, and Tobias Ziegler._

She’d scanned the article, but hadn’t been able to glean much more than “This time last year, Seaborn was an up-and-coming face in the New York legal scene. He left to join the Bartlet campaign’s communications team, and now works alongside head speechwriter Tobias Ziegler—a longtime name in the east coast’s political seam-work—to craft Bartlet’s remarks.”

Angie had always liked Sam. He was smart, kind, and on the rare occasion he let his hair down, so to speak, he was _funny._ All sharp wit, coupled with the flick of a grin in the earnest ridges of his face that lit him up from the inside out.

When he first turned up from Dewey, Ballentine in all his starched-pressed-lacquered glory, she’d worried she was looking down the barrel of another Carter Waite. A boyish face worn like the wolf wore the sheep’s skin.

Because Angie had, at that point, enough years under her belt to be one of the team, but not so many she couldn’t still be considered part of the new class, they’d left her to show Sam the ropes during his first couple weeks. Where to go and who to talk to and what not to do. Had they asked her to show him the fire exits, she would have been more akin to flight attendant than mentor. But for the fact, of course, that he had a penchant for listening intently to whatever it was she had to say. The anti-Waite in all manner of ways, she would come to learn. So far from skeezy it was a wonder he could stomach corporate law at all.

As it ended up, their offices were across the hall from one another for a year and a half. Sometimes they ate lunch together in his or her office—usually hers, it had the better view. Sometimes they tagged along for drinks with the junior associates, only to end up watching CSC in the corner of the bar as the night wound down, snapping peanut shells and discussing game scores. She’d had dinner with him and Lisa more times than she could count. He was the greater of the friends her line of work had ever put her in the path of.

That was all to say she’d already picked up on the fact Sam was restless. But generally, in their industry, restless meant buying a small yacht and going out on the water on the weekends. Or playing jetsetter over the holidays to places with log cabins and mountains to ski. Or moving million dollar apartments once or twice a year. Restless meant throwing money at the problem until it was so green it must be envy.

But with Sam, it had been different. It wasn’t like she originally thought, that he couldn’t stomach it, because he could. He could turn it off at the drop of a hat, but his problem was that he didn’t _want_ to. Sam didn’t want for the money as much as he did the human connection, and that was what weighted the struggle to hack it the longer the years went on. Working with the worst of the best wasn’t the place to seek the sort of soul-deep validation he needed.

That said, the way he went out wasn’t one she’d necessarily anticipated. By the end of the day, everyone had heard the story. By the end of the week, it had been cleared up into mostly truth.

The firm’s most promising young face took a meeting with an old friend, and he was a different man for the rest of the week. He talked back, talked over, had a change of heart whose surface sounded to be about environmentalism, but really, Angie thought, came down to the brass tacks of integrity. It was widely assumed it would cost him six months of his timeline, shove him to the bottom of the pile to teach him a lesson, and once he’d learned, he’d be back on track. But then there was a rainstorm, and a conference room, and a guy soaked to the bone from running around in one of the worst storms they’d seen in seasons. It was practically fable around the office after that: Sam Seaborn, his old friend, and the state of New Hampshire.

No one had realized, back then, what it was exactly they’d torn off to do. It took weeks for the rumors to make their way back to Gage, Whitney. Politics seemed fair, but a half-cocked presidential campaign for some guy most of the country had never heard of? Couldn’t be.

The article was something of a divine intervention. Sam wouldn’t have gone if the guy wasn’t someone worth fighting for, she believed that whole-heartedly. Her lot had already been thrown in with Bartlet, so it didn’t change anything in regards to that, but it did serve to take a bit more of the sting out of him leaving without saying goodbye.

But even that she’d already made her peace with, too. She’d been halfway across Manhattan entertaining a potential client when he made his great break. Whoever Lyman was—another name of infamy, if nothing else—he had to have been pretty special. Sam listened well, but he had a stubborn streak and a certain way of doing most things. The one thing she’d never been able to reconcile with the Sam she knew was _anyone_ coming through and throwing a wrench in his plans. She’d come to her own conclusions that his plans either hadn’t been as set in stone as she’d thought, or there was another version of him she never got to know.

The TV cut to an Aspercreme commercial, and Angie plied herself from the couch cushions. Treading over to the tastefully-sized desk she kept shoved under the window in the corner, she tugged on the topmost right drawer and sifted through the scrap papers inside. She was awful at parting with old slips of paper. Old grocery lists, sheets of yellow blue-lined papers folded in half, and somewhere in the middle, the print out of an article from months past.

It was halfway back to the couch before she realized she was going about it all wrong. She was tracing the body of the article with her pinkie, but the words were smudged in places, faded in others, and all together hard to read without sticking it directly under the lamp on the end table. It wasn’t details she was looking for anyway.

The photo, for all the fault of the camera, was a good one. Five figures posed on the backdrop of a room so loud she would’ve sworn she could hear the phones ringing off the hook and the din of voices. Those in front were seated on mismatched chairs. They were, all three, in heavy sweatshirts labelled for their alma maters, with glasses slipped at their throats, and a clear unsureness of what they were meant to do with their hands. On Sam’s left, the woman, Claudia Jean, wore a professional smile that bordered on euphoric. Her elbows were braced on her thighs and her chin was in her hands. On Sam’s right, the man, Tobias, had his hands clasped precisely in his lap and an expression that might generously be called neutral on his face—however much it erred on the side of grimace—but there was a pronounced light in his eyes that couldn’t be smothered.

Behind them were two men, one younger, one older. A world of difference between their outfits, but not so much in the way they carried themselves; it was a bit like looking at a before and after. The younger was missing his suit jacket and had his sleeves bunched haphazardly at his elbows. His arms were folded proudly over his chest, and an unencumbered grin was plastered on his face. The older was in full, perfect suit, a flag pin on his lapel, and something between a respectful twinge and a full-blown smile to his lips.

Referencing the description again, she couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

_(Top row, L—R) Josh Lyman and Leo McGarry._

Name of infamy indeed.

**iv. the party day**

More often than she remembered, Angie forgot _just_ how much she hated the office holiday party. It was easy to, for one, since it only came around once a year, and even more, it seemed like such a ridiculous hate to carry for something that sounded so ridiculous after twelve months of not being at it. Who in the city _didn’t_ detest their work’s holiday party? A night of drinking watered down liquor—unless you knew the guy in accounting with the secret booze stash, which Angie did—and trying not to get roped into talking politics with your slightly-buzzed, fiscally-conservative, socially-even-more-conservative bosses and coworkers.

But attendance, while not explicitly mandatory, was a bargaining chip. Not just from the partners, since there was always a good chance of retaliation due to underlying contempt from those that _had_ shown up to kiss ass and eat doughy pigs in a blanket, and somethings just weren’t worth the fight.

So every year, without fail, Angie donned the famous firm-wide sweater vest—the one with the tinsel and the lights and the piping that she only wore so people would have good reason to laugh at her behind her back, instead of their usual, petty ones—and sought out the three people in the building that had spines. If she got a little sloshed in the closet where they kept the extra staples via secret booze stash that was no one’s business but her own.

Ultimately, she ended up in the middle of the room under a strand of lights that by no means should be blinking, but were anyway, holding half a dozen conversations. She was, unfortunately, a very wordy drunk, which twisted together with her everyday bluntness to make her everyone’s favorite party guest.

The conversation she was trying her hardest to get back to was with Matt Wells’ wife, Victoria Call-me-Vic. Vic was an award-winning reporter, Vic was six feet tall, and Vic had a cracking accent from living her first twenty years in Boston. They met once a year at the holiday party and ended up laughing their asses off over anything and everything, a bottle of scotch between them.

“Oh, everyone thinks it’s running headlong into the storm twenty-four/seven.” Vic was saying about her work, a small smile checked at the corner of her mouth. “Wish it was, but it’s definitely not. I guess I was like that when Matty and I got together, I thought being a lawyer was busting into court, waving evidence at the judge. Seems like it’s a lot more paperwork and wining and dining.”

“We’re definitely not running into any storms here, even on a good day,” Angie laughed. “But it’s exactly that. Even though some of these guys, I swear to God, think they’re saving the world.”

Vic laughed, teeth flashing from behind holly-berry-red lips. “So you’ve _never_ had anything exciting happen around here? Hard to believe, Ang, sounds like you’re holding out on me.”

“I never said _that._ There’s tales to tell, ask anyone, ask—well, don’t ask Randall, almost all the stories are about him, and he’s sworn me to secrecy. Come to think of it, I never saw any paperwork.”

“Yeah, but I want something I can chew on. I like to think every office has its one big story. My office? You say May 28th in front of my producer and she immediately gets hives. Just like that! Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. What’s the story around here?”

Angie downed whatever was left kicking at the bottom of her cup in one go, the over-spiked, over-spiced eggnog searing on its way down. “Lockwood,” she gasped, flattening her palm over her chest to clear her throat.

“Lockwood?” Vic repeated, tipping her head to the side. The lights caught the blush she’d applied to her pretty, dark brown cheeks and made the glitter in it shine like a strand of colorful Christmas bulbs.

“Don Lockwood. From _Singin’ in the Rain?”_

“Don Lockwood from _Singin’ in the Rain._ Ang, I hate to tell you this, but I’ve never seen _Singin’ in the Rain.”_

Angie hummed a little laugh, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “Honestly? Neither have I. Someone called him Lockwood once and it became an easier shorthand.”

“Him?”

“The _guy?_ Has Matt seriously never told you about this? Rain, New Hampshire—any of this ringing any bells?”

_“C’mon,_ you’re killing me here, and I’m too buzzed to keep going around like this. _Singin’ in the Rain._ New Hampshire. The _guy._ Am I following so far?”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, it’s about five years ago, I’m in my office and David Whitney of name-out-front-on-the-sign fame drops in. Under his arm he’s got what looks to me to be a small rodent of some kind, but was what I’ve since been informed is just someone under the age of thirty. Mr. Whitney introduces this kid to me as Samuel Seaborn, and the kid introduces himself as _just Sam’s fine, thanks._

“The thing I would come to learn about Sam is that, in addition to being cute as a button, he’s sharp as a tack, and people love to underestimate him because of those two things together. Get him going, and he’d talk your ear off, but it wasn’t _bullshit_. That was the most impressive thing; catch him while he was on a roll, and it might be completely off topic, he might take you to second base when you’re running for home, but whatever came out of his mouth started to make sense along the way.

“That’s all to say, he was promising. Hell, more than that, but for the sake of brevity, he was promising. Smart as hell, exceedingly polite, a lovely fiancée, working for one of the forerunning law firms in the state after coming off some time at one of the others that topped that list. He had it together better than half the guys I’ve been working with for going on a decade.

“A few years into his time here, they call him up from the bench. I won’t bore you with the particulars, but it’s that age old love story. A very wealthy company wants to buy some very cheap ships for their oil, you know the drill. Sam was on the team to make sure they got the sweetest deal possible. He pulled this off, he was making partner, no doubt about it. Game, set, match.

“But one day, out of the blue, this guy shows up in the office. He’s an old friend of Sam’s from way back—still not sure how far back we’re talking, there wasn’t exactly a Q&A. Sam comes back an hour later after taking lunch with this guy and it’s day and night. He went _quiet_. And not just for the rest of the day, he was—that whole rest of the week, it was like someone had popped the batteries out of him. I tried asking him about it, but he asked me to back off, so I did. It was rare enough to get close enough to a territory where he might need to draw lines, the fact he actually did, I figured it had to be something real.

“I don’t remember how long it was after that, but it wasn’t too long, I come back late from peace talks in Manhattan one afternoon expecting things to be quiet, but instead it’s all ‘Angelica, did you hear about Seaborn?’ And you know what I thought? I thought he’d closed the deal. I’d just slogged across town in what I can only describe as a storm that would’ve sunk Noah’s boat. I had a migraine the size of the Chrysler. I thought, _he must have done it_. And for a minute, I was ecstatic. Someone must have seen it on my face, because they took me aside and they were all ‘no, he’s gone.’ And I said ‘Gone? What do you mean gone? He left early?’ Some prick actually laughed when I said that, and he calls out, ‘ _No._ Where’ve you been? Seaborn lost his marbles and bolted.’ Took me all afternoon to figure out what the hell that meant, but telling it now’s like saying my name. Even if you weren’t there, you were _there_.”

Taking a breath, Angie launched into the familiar territory. Sam blowing Gage, Whitney, out of the water, trying to implode the deal he’d been brokering for weeks, months. How he’d gone home the night before and researched the topic until he could talk shop like a lifelong fisherman. Whitney scolding him like a puppy that’d pissed on the rug, the client’s trying to figure out what happened to their hotshot attorney, and Sam spouting off all the while with data the likes of which none of them could have been prepared for. The build’s never as good as the crescendo, she doesn’t think.

“But before he can entirely tank this deal, his friend appears at the window of the conference room. And you know what? The guy’s grinning from ear to ear. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t call Sam’s name, doesn’t do anything but smile at him, and Sam stands right up and tears out of the conference room. Whitney’s shouting after him, demanding answers, and all Sam says, and he’s grinning too, but the only thing he says is ‘I’m going to New Hampshire.’ They run right out of the building together, right out into the storm. They said you could see them standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the rain, laughing like kids that’d gotten away with cookies from the jar.”

Angie always paused the story here, made out like that was the end. Most people liked to tell it all the way through, but she liked to give people a place to digest, for their curiosity to twine up inside them like overgrown ivy. For a distinct moment, Vic looked to be reaching for the right words, her eyebrows drawn together in curiosity, teeth tapping with each unuttered word. _“New Hampshire?”_ she finally expelled, incredulously. “But who was the _guy?_ What were they going to _do?”_ She ran her tongue along her teeth before a laugh broached the shores. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you? What’s the rest?”

In the weeks before answers came, every slapdash explanation that could be thought was. It was like hearing people recounting soap opera plotlines. In their youth they’d pulled off a heist and stashed the loot in New Hampshire. They were going to defend a high profile client in a story that always sounded a lot like a cross between the plots of _The Devil’s Advocate_ and _My Cousin Vinny._ There was milder trading, too. They were lovers. They were going to open their own law firm. They were having midlife crises.

It wasn’t until one of the junior associates overheard the partners discussing a run-in one of them had with Lisa and the water dumped from bucket to bucket in gossip’s water wheel that the almost mundane in comparison explanation made its way back down to the lower floors.

“It takes a while, but we find out the guy’s name is Josh Lyman. He worked for Hoynes— _I know_ —when he was still in the Senate. The first time he came through, he was on his way to New Hampshire to hear a guy give a speech. It’s on his way back that he takes Sam with him to go work the guy’s campaign together. The guy isn’t some big name—he’s a governor, sure, but we’ve got fifty of those. Sam clerked in Washington for a bit after college, but this is big money politics. It was the most boneheaded conclusion I thought I’d ever hear in my life.”

“But?” Vic prompted, her cheek leaned against her glass. She’d begun to smile when she heard governor, and the matching one rolling across Angie’s mouth only served to drive hers forward.

“But _now,_ ” Angie said, “That kid is writing speeches for the President of the United States.”

**v. the second election day**

Vic Wells breathed politics more now than she ever did when she was on the east coast. The further away from the epicenter, she realized, the more time people had to throw themselves behind the little guys.

In her work she’d been all over. Born in Boston, she spent the first twenty years of her life there. Then it was her time down in Chapel Hill, followed by a short, ill-timed dalliance to D.C. Bethesda to Norcross to, finally, Manhattan, where she racked up awards like a child to pageant and married the love of her life. They left Manhattan when she got the call to head out to Orange County, and they’d been there ever since.

At thirty-four, she was a hot commodity to any number of news outlets, and could probably report on whatever the hell she wanted if she just asked nicely, but election time was like her Super Bowl, and so to politics she always returned. She understood the draw the glamour of it held, the utter chaos burgeoning underneath the political landscape and behind its locked doors, but she’d always loved the overblown humanity of it.

That was why when the story first appeared on their radar, she’d called dibs on it fast enough to give three people whiplash. The candidate _died_ and they were still a fully functional campaign, all because one crazy S.O.B couldn’t say quit. It was the stuff of miracles and awards galas, a detail she was going to be on hell or high water.

The Horton Wilde campaign for the California 47th congressional district was like a chicken with its head cut off somehow still running a perfectly straight line down the marathon path. Both a well-oiled machine and, to finish off the metaphor, one egg shy of a carton. It was Vic’s story of the damn decade, and she’d never loved anything more. Matt liked to joke he didn’t even eclipse the Wilde campaign, but they both knew better than that. She loved him so much, she had to bring him along for the ride.

The night the results came in, she was at home recovering from a nasty bout of the flu that had, of all things, taken out her vocal chords. She wheezed and whistled and whooped until Matt came running from the adjacent kitchen to find her upright, without anything holding her up, for the first time in days. She was dancing woozily around the living room as her best friend, Shannon, read the numbers to her live from the studio.

“Matty, baby, he won. My God, a dead man won,” she told him, and it didn’t even take him that long to parse through what she’d said.

Right then and there, still in days’ old PJs, with barely any voice at all, she started calling the shots. _Get me the name of the crazy bastard going to the run-off, get me his info, the story, everything._ She wanted to be so far up the ass of Horton Wilde’s replacement that she started appearing in old family photos, and she wanted it all on her desk by the time she made it to the office in the morning.

Matt made her SpaghettiOs from the can since they were always more of a comfort to her when she was sick than chicken noodle soup, and brought them to her on a tray with an origami rose stuck in a coffee mug branded for their bank, because she was allergic to real flowers and he was just that kind of guy. They kept the TV neatly blank and let the mess accrue in the smiles they couldn’t quit throwing one another’s way all night. For the night, anything else she needed could reach her by cell or courier service.

True to form, not ten minutes after his last call, Shannon’s name lit her cramped phone screen. _Samuel Seaborn,_ he said, breathless, when she answered, _His name’s Sam Seaborn, and he works for the president._

It would be the next morning before it all clicked for her. She peeped over Shannon’s cubicle with a grin, only to find him looking back up at her like they’d struck gold. Which, in a way, they sort of had. He shoved what felt like reams of paper at her, but it couldn’t have been more than three or four pages. A glorified résumé of an all-American boy from right down the street in Laguna Beach.

It wasn’t when she saw his name spelled out in ink in front of her, or even when she saw that he’d clerked in D.C. for a time back in the day. It came when she saw Gage, Whitney, Pace in his employment history, and she thought, _hot damn,_ sure and sweet. An overexposed clipping from a small paper in New Hampshire slipped from her grip and hit Shannon’s outstretched hand, which he waved like a winning lottery ticket.

Samuel N. Seaborn became something of Vic’s white whale. The story she chased, but could never quite sink her harpoon into in any way that felt fully satisfying. The little reporter that could, or the campaign engine that kept chugging; either way, they were a match made in copier ink and feedback.

_Taking you now live to Victoria Wells in Laguna Beach. Victoria, what can you tell us about the latest in the unfolding saga of the Seaborn campaign?_

Any mere mention of the runoff made its way to her without fault. She spoke with staffers, constituents, her contacts in the field. She never did get to speak with any of the heavy hitters, not Elsie Snuffin or Will Bailey, and surely not Seaborn in the aftermath of the original Wilde win, but the story was enough to carry her.

What were the odds, really? That she’d marry a guy that used to work with a guy that left his life for a guy to go get another guy elected to the White House? Or that she’d be in such a particular position, not being just someone in her field, but being the cream of the crop who worked with people that welcomed her chasing down that particular story? To sink the loop on the bow and tie off the gift, that would be her ultimate roundabout. She could retire on the high of getting one sit-down conversation with Seaborn, would at least count it as one of the better days of her life.

But for all her effort, she never got there. She spent weeks determining the character of a man who she’d only previously heard tale of at a corporate holiday party. The idea of him had lived on at the back of her mind for years now, something she’d laugh about when someone brought up _Singin’ in the Rain_ and New Hampshire, but there he was on her turf, just out of reach.

Channel 32 became the place to go for any real information on the campaign. She got to write a few small pieces for the website, had a few on location reports. She was in the crowd, there near the end, when the President made his appearance.

She plied herself with coffee to watch the numbers roll in, the crushing defeat that, as the weeks had dragged on, hadn’t been all that much of a surprise at all, let alone in their intensity. It had been about more than a win, for her, in the end. She documented it all with careful hands, and it became something else. It was a people’s story. It was a reflection of the community, or turned tides, or how there were people that still cared, even in the face of an insurmountable fight. They were never going to elect Sam Seaborn to congress in Orange County, and from what she’d heard, he was a smart enough guy to know that. But he still showed up for them. And, if nothing else, gave her a hell of a beat to follow. She never did find the right words to explain exactly what the shape of that campaign became to her.

Two months after her coverage wrapped on the run-off, the TV execs came calling. She was wined and dined away from a life of bouncing between affiliate stations to permanently host a show directly under their national banner in a prime early morning slot. Back to New York she and Matt went, just in time for summer.

**vi. the second first day**

Vic Wells had left Orange County fifteen very long, very productive years ago. So productive were the years, in fact, that when she accomplished the personal goal coming toward her in something like half an hour, it would be far from the first. Fingers crossed it was far from the last, too. Thirty years in broadcast journalism, twenty-five of those on air, it was a hell of a run either way.

During her first gig out of college, when she made that move from North Carolina back up the coast to D.C., she met her fair share of heavyweights. The glean of meeting someone whose name you recognized because you read it off the Teleprompter day in and day out had worn off a long time ago. This was not that. _This_ made her think of being seventeen and interning at a radio station in Boston. Of seeing, across the hallway, one of her music _gods_ being shuffled into the booth for an interview about the latest album he was attached to. It was a memory that she hadn’t taken down off the shelf in a long time, but when her producer, Ricky, told her they were in talks to get this interview, she’d had a moment of reflection. It wasn’t that same sort of giddiness, nothing would ever beat the childhood exhilaration, but there was a kinship in the unexpectedness of the moment.

“Vic, you still with me?”

She looked up from where she was reshuffling her notes in her lap to find Danika holding a mascara wand like she was going to use it to poke her eyes out. Danika Spalding had been the first person she met on the job—eyes like a hawk and patience as thin as the morning worm when it came to Vic’s propensity for trying to leave hair and makeup halfway through if she saw someone she wanted to talk to. _I admire your work ethic, Vic, but you gotta let me have mine, too, huh?_

“You got the time, Dani?”

“Not a snowball’s chance. Hold still.”

Vic did as she was instructed the rest of the time she was in Danika’s chair, letting the ritual of it come neatly to her. Danika arranging her tight black curls around her face, layering on the stage makeup, and just before she sent her off, uttering the tiniest of proclamations: _take care of business, Vic._ Coming from Danika, it was akin to the highest praise.

When she stepped onto set a few minutes later, the lights were already hot overhead, techs up in the catwalk going through their pre-show routine. The endless oil spill of wires splashing out from the camera crew was already being dodged by frantic assistants, and in the distance, she could hear Ricky moving through the halls. His voice had the charisma of a 40s radio personality and the gravel of a man that had chain-smoked every day of his life since he was a teenager; very distinct, not quick to get used to, but once you did, it was easy to tell wherever he might be in the building at any given moment.

“Anybody got the time?” she called, and heads bent to watches as she took the step up to her chair. On the table between was her electric blue water tumbler, out of place with the rest of the subdued scene. Cream colored chairs, a faint blue-green backdrop that hummed its way through a pattern that rocked back and forth. The hard plastic straw was in the corner of her mouth—careful not to upset her lipstick—when from the recesses above her a lighting tech called down the time.

“Thank you, Zachary! Only person here who listens to a word I say,” she teased, eliciting a crowd-funded laughter. She held her straw between her teeth, a smile broaching around it, as she cast her eyes over the crew with a fondness she’d worked hard for.

She got homesick like flowers bloomed. In every season, with a simple beauty that came from time and distance traveled. It wasn’t just Boston, which she missed fiercely even though she made that drive at least once a month. It was her college community in North Carolina, her fierce little team in D.C., the people that helped her along in Maryland, the whole damn station in Georgia, the life she built in Manhattan, the house they’d lived in SoCal and Shannon’s hugs and her desk littered with sunshine paraphernalia because of a joke she’d made her first week there. She had whole lives behind her, teams that she devoted herself to and they to her that she still found herself wanting to call on even if the time she’d been away from them was longer than she’d ever been with them.

When she first came back to New York, it was only a matter of reaching out to old friends to make herself feel at home in the city. But lunches and catching up could only go on for so long, and competitive scheduling meant she couldn’t get away with keeping her old friends in place of making new ones. There was always an adjustment period with a new team, but she found herself still mourning everything they’d left behind in California. On top of not knowing how long the gig would last—she never could’ve dreamed it would end in something of tenure—it was easy to let herself get away with keeping her distance from the team. But with a little time, and a lot of worming ways into hearts, they became one more family she could add to her roster. Wouldn’t have it any other way now.

“Victoria!”

“What’ve you got for me today, Ricky?” she asked on a good-natured sigh. This was their bit; she the amused talent, he the boisterous manager. Quarrelling like old Hollywood while grinning through their teeth.

“Found this guy lost in the hallways, says he’s lookin’ for you. That sound right?”

“What— _Ricky._ ” Her laugh was real when she caught sight of them, Ricky and Seaborn and what looked to be a veritable posse trailing behind them. It was like looking at a cornfield, knowing that it could go on for forever and a day or hardly a few feet. She set her notes on the table and stepped forward to meet them, extending a hand when Seaborn was within distance.

“Victoria Wells. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Senator,” she told him with a mouth whose enjoyment listed to one side. She could see in her peripheral the way his people, even her crew, all turned slightly to meet him.

Out of a mix of curiosity and something like home team pride, Vic had followed his career over the years. His time with Santos came to her through the eyes of interviews that were much better than the ones he’d done under Bartlet. He’d grown permanence, learned a little patience, and still hadn’t been able to teach himself how to fully curb his tongue, much to her delight. His graceful departure there at the end made its own sort of splash with the media, giving them their headlines about his senatorial bid. What a hell of a campaign that had been, a pleasure to watch unfold even when it made her itch for those muggy days reporting on location against a Laguna Beach backdrop. He’d been timid at first, but once they got him with the people, all the bets were off. In comparison, his coming out had been mild. A small statement, one in-depth interview, and a truly artful run of pivoting back to the issues in the weeks thereafter. Timed just right to get the immediate deluge of campaign drama out of the way, but not so much so as to throw the weight of the entire thing off-kilter. He was good at what he did, had a lot of people behind him that were just as good, too.

“The pleasure really is mine, Ms. Wells. After having lead as close of paths as we have—or so I’ve been told. I’m sure you can tell me better than a piece of paper can.”

“You and my husband worked together for a time at Gage, Whitney, Pace,” she said, and that was all it took for his face to change. She’d seen it happen before, right before the cameras cut away. The way his smile grew in earnest, his eyes lit up. When he would drop the senator in favor of the man.

“Matt Wells, right? Now it doesn’t feel so unfair, I heard a lot about you back in the day.”

“Thank God I’m the one interviewing you, then, sir,” she said with a smile, seamlessly meeting his rapport. “I also covered the Horton Wilde campaign and your subsequent part in the run-off, which I’m sure your team will also have told you.”

“I’ve seen the tapes. I’m a little late, but if I may, I’d like to thank you for the immense compassion you brought to your coverage of Horton Wilde’s team. It was striking, and the very sight of integrity.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You were also pretty kind to me, which I’m sure would have been appreciated if anyone would have actually let me near a TV set at the time,” he said with a small huff of a laugh that let her in on the joke, too.

“That was for your own good,” a voice said from behind him, and he did another shift, one that got softer around the edges. “I don’t think it did anything for my ego,” he said, turning toward the source.

“Well, we can’t be entirely sure of that. And you turned out fine, anyway.”

The man that stepped into view at the senator’s shoulder looked not unlike he had two nights ago on Vic’s TV, where he’d been duking it out with an analyst while the show’s host looked on with something that looked a lot like repressed glee. His smile was definitely the same, if not a little less bulldog and a lot more giving.

The stories she’d heard from friends that had interviewed him were about as close to legend as one could get. Off-screen, he was a delight. On-screen, he was a sparrer, a dream and a nightmare—depending on which side you were on—all for the fact that he still didn’t have much in the way of a filter.

Her grin observably grew when the senator put a hand on his partner’s elbow and introduced them. “Ms. Wells, Josh Lyman.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Lyman.”

“You too. And hey, since I’m not an elected official and allowed to play favorites, big fan of your work.”

Her snort of laughter was repressed toward the back of her throat, coming in just under the wire for her to utter an unmarred thanks. He seemed to be able to tell he’d amused her, though, and a proud little smile quirked amidst his neatly trimmed facial hair.

Updates on his career hadn’t come to her as naturally as that of the senator had. Santos’s chief of staff all eight years, she knew, but D.C. hadn’t been able to get rid of him any easier after the transition. He’d gone into consultancy, or his version of it anyway, thumb in the pies of more than a few winning campaigns over the years. She would be surprised that he hadn’t sought office if she didn’t know any better, but if there was one thing she’d learned, it was that there were some people that thrived behind the scenes. All those stories she’d heard, it wasn’t so much of a wonder.

Neither had it been when he was the other face in the senator’s coming out. She’d been told there were rumors in D.C. for years, but her mild surprise had quickly been processed through the lens of more local a memory. The picture painted for her all those years ago of one smile and a hell of a rainstorm.

Since then, they’d made plenty of appearances together on the charity gala circuit, but their work stayed almost militantly separate. This would only be the second joint appearance they’d made on TV, she thought. She doubted it’d be the last. 

Before they could launch into any further chatter, one of the production assistants broke the unwitting circle they’d made, coming up to Ricky’s free side. “Excuse me,” she said, “Sorry to interrupt, but we need to get the senator mic’d.”

He made a sound like _oh!_ and turned an apologetic smile on her. For a flash, Vic could see him as she first had all those years ago. His eyes bright in an honest face that betrayed everything that crossed his mind. There was something in knowing that man hadn’t been burned down to build the one in front of her that thrilled her to no end.

When they whisked him off to finish getting him prepped, all but one of his entourage dispersed. Lyman had his hands in his pockets, peeping mildly at the set. “Been on plenty of these, never fails to amaze me what it looks like behind the scenes,” he said, “How it all comes together for one perfect shot.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and tipped her chin back, seeing it like he must see it. “I’ve been doing this…hell, don’t tell anyone, but thirty years now. I still get that buzz, when I first see the lights and the cameras and the set. Nothing quite like it.”

“Don’t let me keep you from—” He made an awkward motion with his hand, encompassing everything before them, and turned a matching set look on her.

“You’re not at all.”

They chatted amicably to pass the time in first-step details. She admitted she’d watched his interview from earlier in the week, not the first time, and he gave her a worn grin and told her he’d been enjoying her coverage for years. They agreed it was a surprise he hadn’t made an appearance on her show before then. Naturally, they acknowledged the alignments of her and the senator’s lives.

She found their banter comfortable, the kind easily slid into between like minds. Around them, the studio rumbled on, but neither of them appeared bothered by the noise and motion, side-effect of the job. The assistant producer called five minutes to air, and the rueful twitch that came to her lips was a real one. “That’ll be me,” she said, and they exchanged ‘it was good talking to you’ pleasantries out of habit.

The thought formed the question formed the words. Before she made her leave, she cocked her head to the side and asked, a little brazen but that was what she was known for, “Actually, if you don’t mind, could I ask you a question?”

“I gotta ask who’s asking.”

“Comes with the territory,” she acknowledged. “It’s just Vic. Something I’ve been curious to know for twenty years.”

He inclined his chin, a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Shoot.”

“Do either of you actually _know_ about the legend surrounding you and the senator from his old Gage, Whitney days?”

At first, Lyman didn’t say anything, but there was a twinkle in his eye that spoke for all he didn’t. He scratched the underside of his chin, gears whirring until they clicked and he finally settled on, “It’s New Hampshire, right?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they were still telling it to all the new hires. Can’t tell you if they’re still calling the senator Lockwood, though. That might just be for the old dogs. I heard it at a holiday party in ’99, I think.”

“Lockwood?”

A full grin split the carefully managed seam of her mouth as she explained, _“Singin’ in the Rain?”_

She could still hear Josh Lyman laughing when she took her seat. Her notes and water were taken away, and the senator was shown his chair across from her. The PAs and make-up team flitted in and out of frame, adjusting the most fringe details with their single-minded precision. She twisted her chin as directed for the final blotting of tissue and swipes of lipstick, catching glimpses of her guest getting half the same treatment, with the addition of someone scrubbing a lint roller over his shoulders.

“Should I be worried?” the senator asked when they were left alone, inclining his head toward Lyman, who stood still bemused on the sidelines. His arms were crossed over his chest, but one hand had been partially relieved from the fold to send—she assumed the senator, but with the way her day was going, who the hell knew—a silly thumbs up.

“I had a question, couldn’t resist,” she explained, settling back against her chair and smoothing down her pants’ leg.

“No softballs today, then,” he commented with another small smile. Under the stage lights, he came into sharper contrast. There were more lines on his face, and his hair was starting to fade in intensity, but it only served to humble his appearance, to balance the still ravenous blue of his eyes.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir. I appreciate you taking the time to come down to the batting cage.”

“Ten seconds to air!”

She turned toward the camera, flipping that switch. The studio, the location, none of it mattered. As long as she had a camera to look into and a story she cared about, Vic Wells was content. The camera operator began counting them in at five and while she still had the time, she called, “Have a good one today, everybody!” to the assembled crew, seen and unseen, hers and his. The red light on the camera blinked on and she unfurled a genuinely delighted smile.

“With me today is Senator Sam Seaborn, in his first appearance since announcing his bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination in the upcoming presidential election. Later we’ll be speaking with both the senator and his partner, political consultant Josh Lyman. Senator, thank you for being here today.”

**Author's Note:**

> im on tumblr @cauldronoflove


End file.
